With me it’s Charmed. I would have sworn I would like it. It had a supernatural element. It was about three adult single hotties living together, fighting demons and looking for love. And the actresses playing two of those hotties were two of the hottest hotties evah: Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan (Holly Marie Combs, while a good actress and pretty, just didn’t give out that “hottie” vibe.)
But although I watched several eps, I never really liked it. It was ,well, dull. The hotties never acted like hotties: more like wannabe PTA moms who inexplicably had magical powers. And the supernatural mythology was, well, rather dull and unimaginative. I think the problem was that the series was more of a soap opera than a standard drama. Eventually I figured out that although Alyssa Milano or Rose McGowan might occasionally dress kinda sexy … kinda … nothing really interesting would ever happen on the show.
Anybody else have the experience of thinking they’d really like a movie or TV show and then discover it just wasn’t that interesting?
For me it is the American version of The Office. I really like Steve Carell, but his character on the show is so over the top I can barely watch it. If he was just a bit more toned down and less cartoonish, the show would click with me. I want to like it, but I often can’t sit through an episode.
Babylon 5. It’s right up my alley, genre-wise. But I tried it when it started and it bored me. Last year or so I got some of the season disks from Netflix to give it another go and still dullsville. I just couldn’t care about the characters at all.
You need to adjust either your eyeglasses prescription or your Lithium. HMC was by far the hottest of the hotties, while Milano and McGowan are merely pretty.
You’re right about everything though. I’d add that the dialogue was so insipid, the acting so uninspired, and the plots so inane that weekly incestuous lesbian S&M scenes couldn’t have made the series interesting.
That would, however, be the most popular TV show ever created. Naturally I’d have to watch it just to make sure I wasn’t missing any of the finer points of the plot, or misunderstanding the director’s artistic vision and the metaphors therein…
Gentlemen, I think some venture capitalism is in order.
Seriously though, For me, it’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It’s Martial Arts. It has Chow Yun Fat it in. It should be a kick-ass Kung Fu movie, and instead I fell asleep watching it.
TV shows I should like but don’t? Anything Anime. I like like animation, I like science fiction, I like 50 foot tall Robots battling Godzilla and Mothra in downtown Tokyo, but I’ve never found any series Anime that I really liked.
The Pirates of the Caribbean series. I like pirates. I like swashbuckling action-adventure movies with lots of special effects. I like epic, multi-part movie franchises. I like all of the actors involved. So I feel like I should really dig Pirates, but I just find it tedious and lame.
The new Battlestar Galactica. I really liked the series premier/pilot/whatever you want to call it but after two or three episodes of the series, I was bored, quit watching, and never went back.
Same with just about anything “Star Trek” after *TNG *and DS9. Voyager? Meh. Enterprise? Double meh, with a side of “hurr hurr hurrrr.” Come to think of it, once DS9 introduced “Section 31” it had pretty much jumped the shark for me and I wandered away from there, too.
Agreed on Charmed. I think Rose McGowan is liquid sex molded into the shape of a perfect, physically flawless woman, but the show is just freakin’ BORING. And I’m a huge fan of Buffy and Angel, so I expected to be the perfect target audience.
Also agreed on Crouching Tiger. I’m a nut for martial arts films, and I love Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi in just about everything else I’ve ever seen them in. But again, BORING. Gorgeously shot, but it was hard for me to get emotionally invested since it was so slow and took itself so damn seriously. Give me Iron Monkey or Drunken Master 2, not the martial arts equivalent of The English Patient!
I expected to like Napoleon Dynamite since so many people with similar taste to mine loved it. No such luck – I still don’t get the hype, or the “humor.”
Heroes – I watched the pilot and practically fell asleep. Never tried it again, although I have a feeling I should have been more patient. Everyone loves the show now, and I hear it’s really gotten good. I’m a huge fan of intelligently-written comic books, superheroes in particular, but I didn’t want to get into another “mediocre” new show. I’ll give it another chance when it hits DVD.
I’ll second Battlestar Galactica. I am a big SF fan, and I will give just about anything SF on TV at least a chance, but I had absolutely zero interest in the new BSG from the word go.
I love all superhero shows and movies so I was really looking forward to Heroes. Actually liked the first few episodes, but then it just got to soap opera like for my tastes.
Maybe I was expecting to much and would have been let down anyway(like I was with the Batman movies)but I quit watching it.
Oooh me too for Crouching Tiger. I am so glad I am not the only one to have fallen asleep during that film! Surprisingly, my mom (who is pretty much your standard ho-hum movie watcher) liked it a lot.
I am surprised that I DO like Lost. It’s so against my nature to be into a show or movie that is more than just mindless entertainment. But I am in to it, big time.
madmonk - have you given The Office a second chance? I couldn’t stand it when I first saw it - basically seeing these American dorks trying to recreate what the UK cast had so brilliantly done. But I skipped the first season and a half, gave myself a little buffer, and was able to really start enjoying the US version.
The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings. A big thick book, loved by stoners, about magic and fantasy creatures? What could go wrong?
I still don’t really know what’s missing. I could cope with the writing style, but there was never actually a point in the book where I cared what was going to happen next.
Spirited Away. I heard such great things about this one and how beautiful it was. I fell asleep twice and it wasn’t all that beautiful. I thought the story was run of the mill.
Pan’s Labyrinth. Heard great things about this one also. Was neither a good fantasy film nor a good war film or a good mix of the two.
